Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

I encounter many players who have all the strokes and can play really well in practice but during matches can’t re-produce the same standard of play. In matches their game is riddled with unforced errors. It’s always difficult to find the solution to help these players because the cause of the problem can be many things. Humans are complicated and no more so than the mental issues that plague a tennis player who has a chronic problem with unforced errors! I recently had success in helping with a young player who was prone to unexplained errors during her matches. I found the remedy to her unforced errors by first deciding that her problem was mental and not technical. Although most of her mistakes were caused by poor technique, I had seen enough of her using good technique that I decided that working more on her technique would not help her that much in the long term. This is an important decision for you to make because you will have to constantly hold yourself bac...

TRAIN WITH A PURPOSE It always surprises me just how few players actually prepare for tournaments in a coordinated way. Perhaps the belief is that training before tournaments should basically continue on as before and that, hopefully, things should just “fall into place.” If you don’t train with a specific purpose, great results will most certainly be elusive. Here’s a suggestion for your training just before tournament time. Before each tournament, select one topic to focus on in practice and master that topic! Plan your next "work-on" and include it in your  practice sessions before each tournament. Imagine if the topic you decided to improve on before the tournament was the Serve, particularly the wide serve. If you gave yourself 2 weeks to work on the wide serve how good do you think that particular serve would be in the following tournament? Now, imagine for the second tournament, you decide to work on your ability to create a wider backhand cross-court b...

'It’s important to develop your game beyond technique and towards feeling… …with feeling, technique improves' The quote above is important because what many players and coaches believe is that great technique is the end destination. The belief is that with great technique you have arrived. That’s far from the reality! Great technique is really important. It’s part of   the armour that will protect you from the pressure that comes in high stakes tennis. Your game is much less prone to breakdown in matches because good technique is your firewall to the “bugs” your opponent is trying to hurt you with. However great technique is only the framework to the overall “building” that will be constructed around your game.   Those other additional parts to the “building” include things like shot selection (which shot to play) and strategy (your purpose). These elements will give your game greater overall meaning. Another problem with this technique above all els...

As a tennis coach there can be few experiences that equal sitting in the court as a Davis Cup Captain. You’re an integral part of the drama and at the core of the excitement. The fact is that you are communicating directly with your player at each changeover and therefore actively participating in the match. The conditions we experienced in the different countries we visited varied greatly. We were drawn to play Kuwait in an early round of the 1990 Competition during the time of Ramadan, a month of fasting for Muslims around the world.  During the daylight hours you are expected to abstain from drinking and eating which would have been fine if we didn’t have to play the best of five sets in the hot desert sun. The tie was broadcast locally live on TV and during the changeovers the camera would discreetly pan away from the players and into the crowd, allowing players from both countries to drink water! The timing of our return home from that fixture against Kuwait w...

One of the most neglected aspects of modern tennis is the ability to keep the ball low.  Young players today are so focused on hitting bigger shots and are so fixated on topspin that their ability to maintain a low ball is entirely missing. However, the top players understand the value of keeping a ball low in certain situations and employ underspin a lot more than you might otherwise think. Here's when keeping the ball low is beneficial… 1.   To Stop Your Opponent Attacking You It's the era of big groundstrokes! Dominant forehands are now the norm and any ball waist height today is an invitation for your opponent to go on the attack. If you throw in a low ball when you get in trouble during the rally, you neutralize your opponent's offense. The low ball has taken the ball out of their strike zone and gets you back into the rally on level terms. Underspin helps you to defend a point. By keeping the ball low, you are  neutralizing your opponents at...

AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, EVERY PLAYER LOOKS GOOD  The top players attack every point aggressively with big full swings on every ball. Their mindset is one of all-out aggression to finish points quickly. Likewise, their defence is, at times, miraculous. When you attack them, these top players can change into defense and hit incredible winners from impossible positions on the court. During your match, you begin to see this same scenario repeating often. Your attacking game is being ripped apart by your opponent’s incredible defence skills! YOU COULD BE PLAYING A “COUNTER-PUNCHER” PRETENDING TO BE AN ATTACKING PLAYER! Sometimes when you review the match later, you realise that your opponent seldom hits winners from offence. You start to realise that the full swings he/she was taking were a type of disguise. While looking and sounding scary, they weren’t your opponent’s primary source of points. Most of their points came from defence, particularly their counter-pun...

An important coaching tool I use every day is the repetitive use of phrases. T hese common phrases help the student and I stay on the “same page”. They can also be used to set the tone of the lesson in terms of intensity. Here are some common phrases I use and the meaning behind them ' COACH YOURSELF!' Every lesson has a purpose and often that purpose is introducing new techniques or patterns to the player. Once the new technique or pattern has been explained I’ll most likely go straight to live points and challenge the player to reproduce the lesson topic while under pressure. To do this successfully the player needs to recall the key parts of the new technique or pattern and what I tend to do often is gently nudge the player with “Coach Yourself”! I’m asking for self-awareness, self-discipline, and I higher degree of focus from the player when I say this.  'YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT!' Rather than being a negative statement, I use this phrase to demo...